Reynolds Design Studio Blog

Site Launch: Go2Wed.com

admin — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 01:16:21 +0000

Go2wed.com is the latest revision of a Rochester MN based wedding planning guide website. Although the site has been online for almost a year now, we decided now would be a great time to feature the site. The site features well over 300 individual companies in over 30 categories throughout Minnesota. Go2wed.com allows for visitors to create their own websites, browse companies, comment and request information from a specific company.

We have recently added a whole new bridal administration panel dubbed “My Account”. From this panel they can download bridal planning sheets, update their account information, create a free bridal website that they can send to family and friends, and many other things.

We have also reworked the vendor administration panel for ease of flow and use. Allowing vendors to update advertisements they have purchased such as banner ads and featured vendor graphics.

All in all we are very pleased with the results go2wed.com has received in terms of usage stats and comments from individuals.

Some basic CSS Tips

admin — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 02:01:50 +0000

For all of you that wanted to build a site with css but didn’t know where to start or could only get things working in one browser this should help you out.

The difference between margin and padding
Classes vs ID’s (dot vs pound syntax)
Using the cascade

1. The difference between margin and padding

Although it may not seem logical to start off talking about a specific property of css, this will help with some frustrating hair-pulling nights. IE 6 and Firefox display margin and padding differently. I haven’t tested this in IE 7 yet it works fine in that so this should cover you for all cases.

IE 6 - if you have the following css
- margin:0px 0px 0px 15px; OR margin-left: 15px;
- IE 6 will actually display your items as
  - margin:0px 0px 0px 30px; OR margin-left:30px;
  - It doesn’t physically change your code but you will end up with a doubling of the left margin, causing major headaches when trying to position items in place. The solution is to use the padding property, since padding doesn’t do the left side doubling error.
- padding:0px 0px 0px 15px; OR padding-left:15px;

If you learn to use padding properly you can create some extremely complex designs using only css.

2. Classes vs ID’s (dot vs pound sytax)

This is quite a bit easier than the padding issue listed about but still important. Classes can be set to any item multiple times in a document, however an ID can only be set once per document. This is related more to javascript using the DOM but thats for another topic.

Other than only being used once per page classes and ID’s work the same. You can use the same styling for each item.

#myStyle {
padding:0px; margin:0px; color:#FFCC00; text-decoration:underline;
}

.myStyle {
padding:0px; margin:0px; color:#FFCC00; text-decoration:underline;
}

both of the above items will make text red and underlined with no space around it. Not a particularly useful style but you get the idea. You would use the following styles in this fashion

your text here

3. Using the cascade

The cascade is why css was created. You can set a style in the top of the document and can base all of your other tags off this master line. Making minor tweaks here and there you can easily update portions of your site with a new look and feel without having to recode anything. Take a look at http://www.csszengarden.com/ to see what you can do with css.

body {
font-family:Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size:1.0em; color:#999999;
}

So the above style will set the font to Arial, roughly 14pt and gray for the entire body tag. Notice how I didn’t put . or # in front of body. This will set it to the specific tag on the page, rather than having to write . Now if you add the next style below body you can update the font size and color without having to actually change your code.

p {
font-size:1.5em; color:#FFCC00;
}

this will make any

tag in your site roughly 20pt and red. However if you use an tag the color will still be gray. Pretty cool.

However, the real power comes in when you target a specific item on the page. For example.

Your text

More text

the css to target “More text” would look like this
div.holder div.text p {
your styles here
}

this way you don’t have to give each

tag within the div text a specific class, you can easily add and change the code within that div without worrying about if someone adds more

tags that the styles dont carry over.

Take a look at how our site is built and learn from that.

At a later time we’ll discuss the float, and position tags.

~RDS

Utility Launch: RDS Gallery 4.0

admin — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 01:35:31 +0000

Although this isn’t a brand new utility we feel it’s pretty cool. RDS Gallery 4.0 is the newest installment of our photo gallery utility. One of the most requested features was to re-arrange photos in the galleries. We now allow the user to drag and drop the image in the order they want. This works well for administrators who want to tell a photo story.

One of the best features is the ease of customization to the gallery. Since the utility is built in-house there is no proprietary code that cannot be edited.

Click here to view a sample of the RDS Gallery.

Site Launch: Reynolds Design Studio

admin — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 03:02:39 +0000

After two years and three designs Reynolds Design Studio finally has a new website. Our new site shows off what we can do. We implemented a new blog to discuss new findings in the internet industry and a new way of displaying our work.

Feel free to browse the new Reynolds Design Studio website and as always feel free to contact us regarding your creative projects!

Sending HTML Emails

admin — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 02:58:36 +0000

Recently I was trying to send HTML based emails from a server-side script. The configuration of the server, however, wouldn’t let me send them without a bunch of trial and error or they would send and never look like I intended. A Google search on the topic returned lots of somewhat useful information with the exception of this little utility from PHPGuru. HTML Mime Mail allows you to send to multiple recipients and even send attachments.

After some working with the script I realized that the script won’t allow you to send multiple emails to the same recipient. This can cause some headaches if you are trying to test the bcc functionality. So if you’re looking for an easy way to send HTML emails from a server I would suggest looking at HTML Mime Mail from PHPGuru

~RDS

Redirecting an HTML Page in PHP

admin — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 02:55:22 +0000

If your new to PHP and looking for an easy way to send your user to another page try using the php function header(). You shouldn’t use this function if you are trying to redirect a site or page for SEO (search engine optimization) reasons because Google and the other engines won’t give you credit for the redirect.

I use the header redirect function after parsing an html form, or log-in script has been run. If you are going to use this with other html content the function will not work if you have printed ANYTHING to the screen. You should do something like the following:

# this will redirect you page to google.com
header(“Location: http://www.google.com”);
?>

…

If you put the code under the tag the function will not work as you have printed something to the screen. Just some food for thought.

~RDS

Site Launch: Out of the Box Dates

admin — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 05:28:47 +0000

Reynolds Design Studio recently launched Out of the Box Dates, a unique service letting people either download or purchase a romantic adventure with all of the planning taken care of.

Out of the Box Dates: “It’s more than just a date, it’s a complete romantic adventure • It is an investment in your relationship • It is a chance to slow things down • It is TIME - for one another.” This statement basically sums up what Out of the Box Dates is all about.

LeeAnn came to Reynolds Design Studio with a basic need: a great website to promote their service. She received one of the most unique designs we have created (relying heavily on transparent images), a powerful paypal ecom / date download utility and a highly seo friendly site build.

We look forward to helping Out of the Box Dates complete their vision with a romance quiz and other tools in the future.